Mold of a Dead Man
by Shadows of a Dream
Summary: "I hear... a woman's voice when I try to sleep." - Starkiller/Galen Marek, TFU:II. A series of one-shots surrounding events in and surrounding the second game of the Force Unleashed saga. May or may not be continued. Please R&R!  But no flames.
1. I Hear a Woman's Voice

"Galen?"

The clearly feminine whisper is clipped and professional, sharply restrained, yet laced with indistinct obscurity, drifting uncertainly through the stale air of the cloning facility before collapsing back into dead silence.

"Galen?"

Again.

Louder.

My eyelids peel back slowly, my vision dull and watery, clouded with the last remnants of sleep. I feel my lungs expanding and contracting of their own accord, drawing in oxygen through the various white tubes connected to the vat which imprisons me. I breathe hard without opening my mouth or inhaling through my nose: the machines have already detected the increase in the speed of my heart rate, and they're adjusting accordingly. Oxygen pumps automatically through my bloodstream.

The hollow echoes of the woman's voice lurch down the long corridor of cloning vats and tumble down the hallway.

_Galen...? Galen...? _

Experimentally, I twitch my fingers – out and in, out and in. I pinch myself on the wrist. It hurts, but I'm suspended in bacta, and the tiny cut heals almost immediately. Regardless, the sharp pinprick of pain must mean I'm awake.

I haven't decided yet whether or not that's a good thing.

The panicked woman's voice rises to a near-shout. "Galen, can you hear me?"

Some stifled urge to answer her rises up in my chest. I involuntarily open my mute mouth to form words, my lips parting, a syllable beginning to emerge, but the sound is suffocated by the blue liquid all around me. Bacta scalds my open mouth raw, and I convulse, a stream of strangled bubbles pushing out of my chest. Hollow gasps emerge hoarsely from my numb throat. I raise my hands, clenching them into fists, and pound the glass with my pale knuckles until the bones sting dully with pain.

"Starkiller?"

The voice is urgent now, fear poisoning the question with tremulous doubt.

I beat the bacta with my arms, swimming up to the ceiling of my cylindrical prison. Half-insane now, craving some unseen and unknown memory, I cut through the liquid seamlessly, my heart banging against my ribcage. I bash my skull blindly against the transparisteel. Pain shoots across my vision, a flash of white light, and my answering howl of animal rage is swallowed whole by the liquid.

"Galen," the woman cries, her voice bordering on a shriek now. "Please," she pleads. Her voice breaks, and I can hear it all welling up to the surface now, the bitter anguish of a torn heart.

"Please, Galen, listen to me. You have to _listen to me_..."

I feel the weight of gravity suck me angrily down to collide with the floor of my prison. Torrents of bubbles blind my eyes, my vision rippling indistinctly.

"Galen, they're _lying_ to you. They're all lying to you. They want to hurt you; they tried to hurt _me_... You can't listen to them, Galen. You have to get _away_..."

_Galen?_ The name echoes and sings with repercussions of a life forgotten. _Galen..._

Galen Marek.

Son.

Orphan.

Prisoner.

Starkiller.

Apprentice.

Sith.

Runaway.

Rebel.

Jedi.

Martyr.

I'm not Galen.

Who am I?

I'm a number. Subject 1157. Clone project. Grown in a vat. Born to kill. Created to do my Master's bidding –

"Galen, it's all _lies_!" the woman's voice distantly exclaims, desperation threatening to overwhelm her. "Come back to yourself. Come back to me, back to _us_. I love you – don't let them do this! Don't let me lose you, Galen!"

Galen. _Galen Marek..._

I'm not Galen.

But I remember –

I remember Galen.

I remember feeling Galen Marek die.

I remember the searing agony of forked violet thunderbolts, burning deep into flesh and muscle and bone. I remember the blast of infinite Force energy ripped loose by a finite collision of passion and rage. I remember the shock of watching the ground fall away beneath me, my blazing, radiant body catapulting back like a shooting star, only to soar like a fallen meteor into an impenetrable wall of durasteel and duranium and metal –

I remember...

A door hissing open, the cloaked form of the Emperor casually sauntering through... A voice that is not a voice, the dead, feverish growl of a machine – _I did not summon him..._ A sword of scarlet fire, burning agonizingly through the layers of my training gear, my flesh, my muscles, my ribs, my lungs... Wisps of clean grey smoke curling up from my seared chest, smelling faintly of overcooked meat... Cold, metal fingers gripping my neck, supporting me against a cold, metal chest... Darkness and weight, coupled; my heart turns to stone, and I crumple, silent and shattered...

_Why?_

Answer me, mindless fate!

_Why? How?_

Who am I, I alone, I unbound, I unchained – without my Master?

_Galen._

That is the name that the spirit of my fallen father whispered, a rueful murmur piercing through the fragments of bleeding memories.

Galen.

Galen Marek.

And I feel it all now: the person I was meant to be, the person Vader tried to make me, the person I could have been, the person my allies believed I was, the person I thought I was, the person _she _believed I could be, the person I became –

And I'm screaming underwater, but I can't make a sound; I'm banging the transparisteel with shrieking anger in every blow, but it makes no difference; my heart clenches like a fist, and I can't breathe. I want to drown these images, these voices, these endless portraits of conflicting identities, never me... never _me_...

I'm not me.

I'm not _Galen_!

"Galen?" the woman calls, as if from miles and miles away. "Galen...?"

And I know who the woman is.

Juno.

Juno Eclipse.

And I'm out on a landing ramp, the turbulence from the _Rogue Shadow_'s engine whipping my frayed robe in a cleansing whirlwind, Juno's hands suddenly clutching me with urgent passion, her lips moving with mine, my lips moving against them, my fingers moving up to gently press against her soft hair, her cool breath on my face...

"Goodbye, Juno."

And then I'm falling...

_Galen, _I correct myself. Galen kissed her. Galen loved her. Galen fell away into icy space, torn away from her. But as for _me _–

I'm not Galen.

I'm not anyone.

I close my burning eyes, but darkness is a shroud over my soul, and I toss and turn in emptiness.

Then I open my eyes.

My wrists sting. The only light comes in pale, filtered shafts that fall unevenly through the bars hanging above at the rim of my prison, but even in the poor lighting, I can see I'm bleeding. Or rather, _was_ bleeding. Crimson streams have dried on my manacles, continuing down the links of the chains that secure me to the durasteel floor of my isolation chamber on Kamino.

After a second, I realize that my jaw is on fire, too. I have to deliberately unclench my teeth, and it hurts like someone is ripping my mouth apart.

A woman.

Why do I always hear a woman's voice when I try to sleep?

**A/N: **This entire chapter sprung from a single Starkiller quote in TFU:II. "I hear... a woman's voice when I try to sleep..."

Please review, but no flames.

May the Force be with you!


	2. To Do My Bidding

A vibration, a movement, a frantic shifting of someone's feet in a futile attempt to escape. But I'm already there. I wheel around, a whirl of scarlet fire, pulsing and spinning with Dark Side energy, my dual sabers already poised to strike – but what I see before makes my blood freeze in my veins.

It's not a rebel soldier. It's not a stormtrooper.

It's not –

My _enemy._

It's... something... _else_.

The woman's sky blue eyes widen as if in response to physical pain. "Wait!" she cries.

No. I can't wait.

But I do.

The blades clenched in my sweaty fists sing with visceral heat and fury, but I can feel them tremble uncertainly, wavering, the very edges of the swords hovering a hair's-breadth from the base of my enemy's neck. My breath trembles, violent ice shooting down my spine.

The woman's scruffy excuse for an Imperial uniform glows red with the light of my twin sabers. Her lips – lips that I knew so well, moving with mine – tremble uncertainly, choking on words. Her hands – hands that crushed me to her with such passionate urgency – are raised in a useless attempt to protect her face. A mistaken, involuntary flick of my wrist, and I could slash right through both her wrists and her head.

She doesn't have to speak again. I can't breathe either. I can't even think.

My arms fall, lowering uselessly to my sides. The steady hum of my blades shudders up my arms, synchronizing with the ferocious pounding of my heart. There's a sharp, anguished intake of breath, and some absent part of my brain registers that it's my own.

"J-J-Juno?" I gasp.

And I hope against hope that she doesn't answer.

Because it shouldn't matter, and it does. I know it does.

Recognition and desperation, mingled, dawn like starlight in Juno's haggard face. She straightens where she stands, eyes wide, almost mad with panicked joy. "Yes," she breathes.

Yes, she is Juno Eclipse. No matter. I already knew that.

The dark hulk of my Master, more machine than man, towers over me like the shroud. Heavy breathing comes through his respirator, somehow louder in the intense stillness.

"Strike her down," Vader intones, his leaden voice radiating hard black contempt.

The woman's neck is so close to my outstretched swords, I can almost smell the soft flesh beginning to burn. I move to try and slice my weapons cleanly through her – yet, before the stroke can follow through, I instantly hesitate and reverse, attempting to draw my arms back – but then I find that I haven't actually moved. I can't move at all, regardless of direction. I've become a passenger in my own body.

I stare at Juno. I stare at a woman I've never seen in my life; and I can feel her kiss against me, feel her fingers clutching my robe with fearful belief that I will come back to her, even as I pull away and dive from the _Rogue Shadow_'s landing ramp.

I never knew her.

_And yet _–

I always knew her.

A mental hurricane whirls and rages in my mind, sensations not my own, memories of a dead man, clawing me apart from the inside out – the smoky stench of a forest on fire, the image of General Kota as he falls out the shattered transparisteel viewport, the violent vibrations of a ruined starship crashing over and around me in an explosive series of fiery blasts –

I close my eyes, but all I hear is a woman's voice.

_The voice I always hear when I try to sleep..._

In this moment, my Master hanging above me, Juno lying defenselessly below, hatred and love become a consuming flame, and my heart feels numb and knotted inside of my chest. I can't move. I don't even want to move. My bones feel like frozen durasteel.

Vader's breathing deepens behind me. I can't bring myself to look at him, and I'm afraid of what new and insidious visions might seize me if I look at Juno again.

_Strike her down?_

My voice belies my raw agony. "I _can't_."

"You will!" Vader rebukes, harshly. He saunters towards me with one black-gloved fist raised. "You were created to do my bidding!"

A fresh tremor begins in my shoulders and rolls down my back and arms. An animal groan pushes out of my chest, my lungs heaving, agonized moans dragging through my throat. Without thinking, without intending to move, without even consenting to the motion, I feel my shaking fingers close more tightly around the hilts of my weapons and squeeze.

_Click. _

_Click._

A dull buzz hisses faintly, and my crimson swords collapse into the sterile, silent air.

**A/N: **This is directly inspired by one of the opening cutscenes of TFU:II. In fact, the dialogue and actions are entirely taken from that context. The references to a forest on fire, Kota falling, a crashing starship, and finally, Juno's voice in Starkiller's dreams, are all directly from his own dialogue.

Also, just a little something I'd like to note: this entire fic started as a result of me becoming immersed in TFU and TFU:II while making some music videos for YouTube. I had a blast with those, so I ended up writing some fan fiction too. Go figure. If you'd like to check out those videos, I have three up as I write this - they're on YouTube under the username KeyboardKarate.

Please review this fic, but no flames.

May the Force be with you!


	3. The Hunter

Situated at a terror-inducing height above the roaring and tossing of the dark, angry waves, the landing deck of the Kaminoan cloning facility had been desolate and deserted for a long while. Naturally, there should have been something of a stir when the sleek, shining ship cut through the death-black clouds, streaking like a meteor across the ash-black sky; but, as there were no living organisms to confront this strange new development, the fighter descended without incident.

Only one man lived here; or rather, many of the same man. But they were all securely contained within their respective transparisteel vats, silent and sleeping, only to be revived if the current copy of Starkiller failed to complete its primary objective. His sole objective, in fact.

Project Starkiller was bred to kill – and his creator had a list of very specific kills in mind.

That was where the new ship's pilot came in.

His identity was largely unknown, as there was no one to immediately confront him upon his transport's landing. The face behind that vibroblade-scarred, blaster-burned, grenade-seared, shrapnel-scratched, Mandalorian helmet was only familiar to his client: and he liked it that way.

The pilot's identity?

To begin with, he was sentient, to be sure.

He was hardly another member of the common rabble scattered about the galaxy.

He wasn't a smuggler, either; he had no time for such petty endeavors. He wanted Republic credits, yes – but honor meant something to him, and honor was something that scruffy smugglers and criminals sorely lacked.

He was not a scientist – those had left Kamino long ago, having completed the necessary research for cloning a sentient being of a high midi-chlorian count. Well, truth be told, they hadn't technically _left_. They had been... taken care of.

Lord Vader preferred to keep his secrets to himself. Unfortunately, the escape of his latest Starkiller initiate had... complicated things. In response, Vader had contacted the only man he could truly trust.

A man whose fighter's silhouette now emerged from the dense, thick covering of cumulonimbus clouds gathered above Kamino – the wings coming into view, now the cockpit, now the remainder of the craft, its surface illuminated by the forked bolts of lightning that flashed growlingly across the atmosphere at uncertain intervals.

The pilot of the fighter closing in was, if one was willing to extend the definition just slightly, a human. Perhaps not entirely – but then again, it seemed like most of those privileged enough to have been born _human _either would lose or had already lost that quality somewhere in the wars.

Yes, the pilot was human. But not in the way that Lord Vader was human – that hideous fusion of machine and man, breathing like a dying Podracer, glowing with switches, buttons, icons, and regulators, like a control panel instead of a person – but nor was the pilot human in the sense that a true man would welcome him as one of them.

The pilot of the fighter was, in fact, a clone.

A clone of a dead man.

Maybe he had more in common with Project Starkiller than he gave himself credit for. It was, truly, a shame that Starkiller was to be enslaved all over again. The pilot had a hunch that under more favorable conditions, they might have made good allies.

_That's what happens to Force-sensitives, _the pilot reflected as he carefully directed his ship closer towards the ground. Another flash of lightning left him half-blind for a split second, and he had to adjust the angle of the fighter's wings in response. A deafening roar shook the heavens, and then the dark swallowed it whole once again like a ravenous beast. Cold expanse, sunless and starless, hung over the cities of Kamino.

Light and dark: eternally locked in conflict.

Such was the fate of Jedi and Sith alike.

_Always slaves to Light or Dark, _the pilot thought._ Never free._

The pilot thanked the forces of fate he had been born a soldier. He was an outsider, to be sure – a lone wolf, a pariah, a one-man army.

Not that it mattered to him.

In his better moments, the pilot recalled his father's hand upon his shoulder, his father's unquenchable fire of a heart, his father's hearty chuckle at the jokes of his son. In his darker moments, the pilot chose to forget them.

A shadow of a smile formed beneath his helmet as he considered what the higher powers would say of that which he had become.

He was one man. Fate had decreed that it was so, and he had relentlessly carved a name for himself in spite of it.

"One man,"the pilot chuckled to himself, recalling the Galactic Army's motto, "but the right man for the job."

The ship's engines quieted, turbulence swirling wildly around it as it neared the landing deck.

The pilot squared his shoulders and set his jaw. His half-smile deepened into a hard line. His eyes, momentarily alive with a mercenary's fire, became cold stone behind his T-visor.

_Now, to business._

The Jedi target would fall. Of that, the pilot was certain.

The only question left was how much damage would get wreaked along the way.

The ex-Jedi in question had managed to break loose of the Dark Lord's bonds, tear his way through a well-armed battalion of stormtroopers, and take to the skies in one of the facility's own TIE fighters. Thus, the pilot had received a transmission from Lord Vader himself, detailing the assignment: find the most recent edition of the late Galen Marek, and teach him to acquiesce to his proper Master's grisly wishes.

The Jedi's previous resilience and impressive escape didn't bode well for a tracking or reconnaissance mission, let alone a capture or a hunt.

_On the other hand,_ the pilot reminded himself, _I've never cared about the odds._

The Jedi must be taken down. Taken down, and made to obey the orders of his superiors'.

After all, Darth Vader was growing tired of training madmen.

The pilot's ship landed with a spray of clean grey steam, its turbulence superheating the wet deck below so that wisps of smoke curved up and away from the base of the descending aircraft. The pilot cut the engines quickly. No need to draw too much attention. He leaned over to the control panel and activated his craft's cloaking device. Then he glanced outside the transparisteel viewport, trying to get a feel for his surroundings. There was nothing to be seen but clouds and rain and durasteel.

With a resigned sigh, the pilot squared his shoulders and stepped outside into the blinding, icy sheets of rain. He couldn't help but get the feeling that he didn't belong here.

Then again, nothing belonged here.

Nothing but shadows of a dead man, overseen by the shadow of a man whose heart and soul was equally dead.

The pilot's ship, the _Slave I_,was as alien to this place as a Jedi Knight to the fringes of the lawless Outer Rim. Amidst the seamless, smooth design of the Kaminoan facility – sterile, white, and cold – the _Slave I_'s battle scars were all the more acute.

The _Slave I _was a ship that wounded and been wounded. It had the damage to prove it. So did its pilot. Machine and man alike had both been taught a hard, cruel lesson by this messed-up galaxy: armor would take the wounds.

And the bounty hunter who piloted _Slave I _had been building armor around his heart, soul, and body for a very long time.

A lifetime, in fact.

Boba Fett strode silently and confidently towards his rendezvous point, his boots clacking hollowly against the rain-soaked landing deck. He kept his blaster braced against his shoulder, gloved fingers ready to yank the trigger at a second's notice.

Fett had worked missions for Darth Vader before, and he had never quite managed to predict the Sith Lord. Betrayal was second-nature to the hulk of burned flesh and sick, glistening, cyborg armor; the death toll in his wake fell like dice in a Sabaac game, Imperial lives laid out like cards upon a gambling table, surrendered for a higher objective. And Fett didn't like being part of a game – regardless of what side he was on.

For now, he was a key player. Later on, perhaps not.

Boba Fett kept his gun at the ready.

In the distance, his grotesque form obscured by the thick mist and crashing rain, his cape billowing out behind him in the stormy whirlwind, Lord Vader stood ready to receive him. "Fett," he acknowledged. "True to your word."

The bounty hunter nodded, closing the distance between them in only a few brisk strides, and then he knelt, head lowered, at the feet of his employer. "At your service, my Lord."

**A/N: **Let me start by saying a gigantic THANK YOU! to my two reviewers. This chapter would _not _have happened if not for you.

I've shaken things up a bit, here, switching to the third-person omniscient as opposed to the first-person POV of the Starkiller clone. I wanted to do something with Boba Fett, so I started writing a brief narration that would lead up to his canon cutscene meeting with Darth Vader – but that intro went on for two and a half pages, so it became this. Maybe I'll write the cutscene later on.

I really, really appreciate the feedback, you two. You know who you are. Constructive criticism, comments, and support alike – it all meant _so much _to me. Especially when I clicked to your profiles, and realized (to my shock,) how much older you were than me. Getting positive feedback from someone your age really meant something.

Also, if you're looking for another Star Wars fic to read – my largest project currently is titled Why I Breathe. It's about three Jedi – Padawan Julia Star, Padawan Aaron Earthshaker, and Jedi Knight Kherev Ra'shah (all OCs) – as well as a rogue clone assisting them, called Thirty-nine (also an OC) – as they struggle to find meaning and hope in a world gone wrong, ripped apart by Order 66. Did I mention there's also an evil, immortal warrior called Darksaber who's seeking revenge on any and all Jedi? Oh, and a romance? And action? And it's getting SUPER LONG?

Hahaha... sorry for that rant. But if you want to check out Why I Breathe, feedback on that means more than anything.

I swear, if not for your fantastic feedback, this chapter would not have happened. Please R&R this latest update!

May the Force be with you all!


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